4 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 5
cendancy and indeed remembers, amid a gener-
ally quite indulgent regime in St Conleth’s which
was a rare priestless Catholic boys’ school, his
remarkable nastiness. His speciality was not just
rapping people on the knuckles with his wooden
‘duster’ but throwing the thing at recalcitrants or
just for fun. The SS infl uence, or perhaps being
hit by a duster, accounts for the editor’s insis-
tence on punctuation always going outside quo-
tation marks.
And there’s one for everyone in
…Zzz
Villager admits he feels sorry for Tubridy who re-
ally didn’t do much harm though of course he
didn’t do much good either, in his position. For
Villager it was more what he stood for. By con-
trast, Patrick Kielty seems unsmug — even if
his producers, and what used to be known as
RTÉ Management, have reinforced his obliga-
tion to the old Sale of the Century schtick which
demands grotesque competition giveaways and
razzmatazz. Compulsory over-egged celebrities
and an unwillingness to challenge the torpid
viewer too are hammered down from the top. But
just as Oliver Callan marked his territory by inter-
viewing Friends of the Earth boss Oisín Coghlan
a few days into his slot fi lling in for Tubridy on
radio, Kielty did in early October give an outing
to abrasive British-Irish trades-unionist and all
round ideas man, Mick Lynch. Next stop Chom-
sky takes over from Brendan O’Connor.
Nominative determinism
New York’s civil fraud case against Trump
opened with evidence from Donald Bender, his
ex-accountant at Mazars. Attorney Jim Trusty,
resigned from representing the former President
in another case in June, citing “irreconcilable dif-
ferences”, after he severed ties with Trump in
his classifi ed documents case in Florida—rais-
ing speculation that he stepped down because
Trump is a bit hard to work for. Susie Wiles now
oversees Trump’s legal expenses for him includ-
ing for the explosive classifi ed-documents trial
before Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.
Done the Axe
“Axe the tax, cut the bills and build the houses”,
bays shouty Liz Truss at the Tory Conference. It all
started with dullard Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit
Done”. Varadkar fi nished up his speech on the
Planning Bill on 3 October with “Let’s get this
done”. On an English train recently Villager was
exposed to the ubiquitous security message,
“See it. Say it. Sorted”. The sad Irish equivalent
is Sinn Féin’s “out of touch, out of ideas and out
of time”. In terms of political slogans there’s a lot
done more to do.
PriestleSS St Conleth’s
A son of a former Argentine ambassador is de-
manding an apology from St Conleth’s College
because their French teacher from 1957 to 1985
was an unrepentant former SS o cer. The editor
was in the school for a year during M Feutren’s as-
News Miscellany
Villager
Guinnless
James Watt, founder of British beer company
BrewDog, has said sales of its stout are now
fully 50 per cent the value of Guinness’s in Brit-
ish supermarkets — and he plans to “subsidise”
publicans in a vicious bid to overtake the Diageo
subsidiary’s “250-year monopoly”. Villager isn’t
convinced of quality in the Guinness stable, and
that’s not just the disgrace that was ‘Harp’ — al-
coholic Mi-Wadi. The quality of Guinness itself
isn’t clear even though it boasts: “Our key ingre-
dients – other than inspiration – areroasted bar-
ley, malted barley, hops, yeast and water”. But
you’ll have noted the import of the word “key”.
Villager is imbibing a bang of corn syrup and per-
haps, in some of its incarnations, preservatives.
Guinness deserves a comeuppance. From the
1820s onwards it adopted a policy of targeted
below-cost selling for just long enough to put
the local brewery out of business. Dublin had a
dozen breweries in 1860 but by the 1960s coun-
trywide there was only Beamish and Murphy’s in
addition to Dublin’s Guinness. It is all the more
fi tting therefore that in 2023 there are again a
dozen breweries in Dublin alone. And if it’s to
the detriment of multinational monolith Diageo,
all the better.
Villager almost misses the old regime
Coming at you
4 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 5
From the belly, Seán Kelly
Thrilling firebrand truth-teller Seán Kelly MEP
(Fine Gael) has had it with the planning system
and its delays. He tweets: “In particular” (he is
forensic): “I am calling for renewable projects to
be granted permission by default if a decision
is not made in the statutory timeline. Secondly,
more resources, including more personnel, must
be aorded to planning authorities immediate-
ly”. But granting permission in default, which dis-
enfranchises, you know, the Community which
ha
s a stake, was ruled to be in breach of EU law
several decades ago.
Frankness amid self-deception
Former Chief Justice Frank Clarke, who has his
head screwed on as tightly as anyone in this
jurisdiction, has cautioned that tweaking the
rules for objecting to planning applications will,
far from curtailing delays, generate them – as
complex and lengthy litigation tests the points
one by one. Clarke’s intervention undermines
the essence of former Attorney General Paul Gal-
lagher’s input into the Planning Act. And it casts
a sha
dow over the million articles the Business
Post has published and the half million articles
the Irish Times has published, attributing delays
to litigation. Litigation is a paper tiger. Still, in-
stead of explaining to his cabinet colleagues that
th
is is a mistake Eamon Ryan who knows noth-
ing about planning or environmental litigation,
hav
ing never been an activist, thinks it will get
him bus lanes in Ranelagh. Clarke has reserved
the right to say “I told you so” but after all, what
would a Chief Justice know about law?
Frankness amid deception of the
state
Frank Mulcahy is the former head of ISME who
was fired in 1999 for set-up, but non-existent,
fraud,on the back of lies from the Department of
Trade — lies that have been rehashed by numer-
ous ministers, notably Mary Harney, Leo Varadkar
and Micheál
Martin ever since. Mulcahy finally
seems to have Varadkar on the rack. In 2022 in a
letter addressed to the Dáil’s Committee on Pro-
cedures that was investigating his Department
for mi
sleading the Dáil, Varadkar acknowledged
that he depended on his Secretary General for the
facts about Mulcahy. Of course we all know that,
but at some stage you have to take responsibility,
even legally, for what you say in the Dáil. He then
proceeded to explain claiming: a) that “the Om-
budsman had not found the Department at fault
in any
respect”; b) that “the EU Ombudsman had
not criticised the Department’s engagement on
these matters” and c) that the Minister made the
same claim in respect of “the EU Commission” .
Firstly the Irish Ombudsman, as the Department
knew, had already emphasised his oce had
carried out no investigation. Now, incendiary cor-
respondence from the EU’s Ombudsman, Emily
O’Reilly, has pulled the rug on Varadkar’s claim
that the Department had been exonerated by the
EU Ombudsman’s oce as well. On 3 August
2023, O’Reilly wrote: “My oce (contrary to what
the Minister Leo Varadkar maintained in 2021)
could find no record of ever having inquired into
the matter you raised. I can only urge you to share
this information as you wish. I will share this re
-
ply with the Secretary General of the Department
of
Trade”. The EU Commission Secretary General
also denied Varadkar’s claim about it calling for
the matter to now be resolved “promptly and
satisfactorily”. Micheál Martin is in a similarly
dangerous boat. Mulcahy, a wily old fox, is said
to have enlisted Bertie Ahern to make his case to
senior Ministers.
Villager predicts tears, apologies and maybe
even compensation, and, mainly, more to come.
Trustworthy since 1859
We know from his enthusiastic book ‘Showtime:
the Inside Story of Fianna Fáil’ where he went in-
side that testosterone-driven party during boom-
ier times with little qualm, that Pat Leahy, head
honc
ho w
ith the Irish Times politics team, is alive
to his laddish side. He loved PJ Mara and has a
weak spot for Bertie. All of his articles aspire to
finishing up quoting Breandán Ó’hEithir’s (amus
-
ing) story whose punchline is “we will in our arse
hav
e our own gentry”.
So a recent Leahy opinion piece climaxed that
we would in our arse have a NHS. But the loose
testosterone got in the way of saying why, (and
betrayed a Hobbesian worldview). What we need
is a health system that is free at the point of use.
Try and follow from the following if Leahy
agrees. Or is he just being a lad? He slags o Sinn
Féin’s health spokesperson: “As David Cullinane
says, though, it’s less the actual NHS (despite
the rhetoric) than the idea of universal health
-
care that Sinn Féin is seeking to emulate and
impl
ement. But all parties agree on the goal of
a health service that provides universal access,
based on need and not ability to pay, free at the
point of access. That’s what gave us the Sláintec
-
are plan – agreed upon and supported by all the
par
ties”. Got it?
He seems in favour of Sláintecare/NHS so
far. But then Leahy mischievously lays it down
hard: “For the foreseeable future, as Gerry Ad
-
ams would no doubt agree [Adams flew o for
US he
althcare when he needed it Phnar Phnar],
there will be a role for private healthcare along
-
side the public system”. Why? Or, as GBS and
RFK h
ad it “Why Not?”. Coherence on the big is-
sues would be welcome. Laddish non sequiturs
on the ideo
log
y behind policy are short change.
Village panopticon
Keen Village enthusiasts will need to be kept
up to date on the goings-on around the maga-
zine’s unpleasant recessed doorstep on Ormond
Qua
y
. The half-demolished Ormond Hotel saga
next door goes on, though rumour has it build-
ers are due back on site after three years o, fol-
lowing resolution of a legal case with the editor.
The hot
el
developers seem to be in some sort of
partnership with the applicants for an aparthotel
on the site of the headshop which was blown up
some years ago just down the street at the back.
Underneath the velvet-and-leather Village oce
with its Westminster-chime mantel clock, La Ro
-
cha restaurant has superseded Bagots Hutton,
whic
h w
as fatally and sadly undermined some
years ago by Breni Demolition which damaged
the party wall with it, rendering the restaurant
unusable for years, and eectively bankrupting
it. In keeping with the general destructive mood,
Breni have now pulled down the Workingmen’s
Club on Little Strand Street to the rear of Village’s
oce, though this time they managed not to de
-
stroy any adjoining buildings by mistake.
As t
o the doorstep itself, outside the oce the
vomit pooling remains grandiose as the building
is setback from the hotel. A recent reservoir re
-
mained uncleaned ten days after delivery despite
f
our c
alls to Dublin City Council and a request to
the operator of the rotating machine-cleaner to
extirpate it. Nobody knows if its origin is political.
The tree opposite the door beside the quay
wall, which was knocked by the City Council two
years ago, has not been replaced but a tarmac
tribute amid the concrete paving and granite
kerbing signals the spot.
Just around the corner is the house where cor
-
poratist Taoiseach Seán Lemass grew up and
La Rocha, formerly Bagots under Village’s office
Ritzy! Village’s office
Making tarmac out of trees on Ormond Quay
6 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 7
of Housing and Planning functionary contacted
a senior ocial in the Planning Department of
the Council saying “the full rigour of disciplin-
ary action should be applied” to Rose who had
v
ery properly criticised the Department’s forced
reduction in apartment standards in 2015.
Playboy Planning
Talking of the way ocial planners sew things
up against the public interest, Villager occasion-
ally ponders how Paul Hyde, former Deputy Chair
of
An Bord Pleanála, who was recently released
from prison after he was held to account for a
number of dodgy decisions, managed to get
away with bonking some of the sta he compro
-
misingly worked with on particular planning ap-
plications. All the reports into his misconduct
w
ere too squeamish to name names but they’re
well known to folk around this Village and it is
important not to forget as well, of course as to
keep the moralising to the decision-making pro
-
prieties rather than to forgiveable lubricious con-
cupiscence.
Ave Ava
Ava Evans, who works for the Joe politics web-
site, has described the comments made about
her
byLaurence Fox on the execrable GB News
as “unforgiveable”. Fox was suspended by the
channel after the actor-turned-politician sug-
gested no one would want to “shag that” after
E
vans was mean about tackling men’s mental
health problems. Fox is nephew of Edward Fox —
the Jackal in ‘the Day of the Jackal’ (1965) and
a recent sponsor of the UK Independence Party;
and son of James Fox, an evangelical Christian,
who was the aviator in ‘Those Magnificent Men in
their Flying Machines (1965). Though he is him
-
self a nobody — and very ‘Twentieth Century’.
E
vans told the Daily Mail, “I’m not naive. I
know that men talk like that about women. But
this was on national TV. As if it was an option for
him to have sex with me. As if men get to look at
you and decide if they want to...”.
She said the worst part of the experience had
been explaining it to her father.
“My dad was just confused. He said: ‘But why
would he say this? Have you dated him?’ He just
didn’t get it,” she said.
“My parents didn’t go to university. They have
ordinary jobs and have always been so proud of
what I do and have achieved.
Why should my choice of career – political
reporting – mean I have to contend with this?”.
Fox, who is never worth paying attention to, de
-
scribed GB News’ disciplinary hearing as a “show
tri
al” and took o to join a group protesting a
monthly drag act for children hosted by a south
London pub.
No-one’d hump the frumplump
Trump
Just as when Trump calls a woman a pig or not
his type or says someone is overweight Villager
thinks there is a
place for people
who hit back.
Trump is the
overweight pig
and no woman
would shag Lau
-
rence Fox who
look
s like a fox
that has been
expelled from
Harrow.
from which his father conducted business as a
hatter and clothing outfitter. It is the house in
which the 16-year-old Seán accidentally shot his
younger brother Herbert dead. Lemass’s biogra
-
phers explain his perceived asceticism by refer-
ence to the lifelong impact on him of the murder
in 1
923 of his older brother Noel; but the real
source was poor Herbert. Most of Lemass’s biog-
raphers do not mention any such brother, though
T
om Garvin does note that a child he names as
Bernard died young.
Twenty years ago Dublin City Council renovat
-
ed No 2 and its neigbours as a demonstration but
u
nfortunately to a low standard. A few weeks ago
a phone shop moved in with a vast plastic sign
to undermine any value to the restoration or the
building’s history.
Rose again
Former Dublin City planner, Kieran Rose, was
cofounder of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Net-
work (GLEN), a progressive force which folded
when
he was discovered to have used the char-
ity’s resources during his unsuccessful Seanad
el
ection campaign in 2016. He was also a rather
self-aggrandised planner who put modern den-
sities ahead of compliance with the democrati-
cally drawn-up City Development Plan on many
oc
casions. Now it has emerged a Department
Plasticated Lemass house
Preparing to plasticate Lemass house
Why should she contend with this?
Has its thorn
Greasy speckie-eyed Fox
6 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 7
woman is an adult female or some suchlike.
Gript were thrilled.
Now that he’s retiring, the Irish Times gave him
an interview in which he contradistinguished
himself from Ireland’s most conservative politi-
cian ever, Oliver J Flanagan, his dad. “My father
w
as a controversial figure. He was deeply con-
servative, closely associated with the Catholic
Chur
ch”, says Flanagan. Charles is a horse of a
dierent colour”. That’s what Harry McGee thinks
anyway; and no better place than the Irish Times
to colour a piece with editorial bias. Villager re-
flected whether he really was that horse. McGee
r
eported: “Over the course of his career, Flana-
gan says he had no diculty in voting for divorce,
s
ame-sex marriage, to repeal the Eighth Amend-
ment and also the abortion legislation that fol-
lowed it”.
B
ut “he finds himself out of step with the
changed atmosphere around politics…’The lib-
eral agenda has accelerated in recent years in
a w
ay that causes me discomfort’, he says. ‘It
is about euthanasia, a very radical ideological
transgender agenda, commercial surrogacy and
a move towards liberalised abortion, completely
dierent from that for which I voted five years
ago’”.
So Villager reflected on whether this blockage
Charlie has is an inheritance from his more obvi
-
ously zealous father. In the end Flanagan’s views
ar
e illiberal, infused with a quasi-religious belief
in the transcendent value of life which may or
may not be wise but is not liberal. His belief that
there is transgender agenda that is radical and
ideological may cover for his illiberal discomfort
with acknowledging the identity of people the
way they define themselves.
Villager is going to characterise Flanagan as
a conservative like his father but a pragmatic
moderate unlike him. And with no evidence of
Catholic underpinning. Charlie Flanagan: illib
-
eral. If Mr Flanagan wishes to contradict this and
e
xplain the apparently incoherent mélange of his
views, old and new, no doubt this magazine will
accommodate.
The collective noun for
departing FGers: a Bruton
Farewell to the Flanagans but also to John Paul
Phelan, Richard Bruton, who, following Brendan
Grin, Michael Creed and David Stanton, as well
Ungripped
Villager doesn’t think much of Gript so he ignores
it. Villager doesn’t like all the mistakes it makes,
its links with Youth Defence and the lack of clarity
about its funding sources. He doesn’t like its in
-
dulgence of populism and conspiracy theorists or
its
aggressive undermining of government press
conferences in pursuit of ideological gotchas,
Lack of truthfulness drove its having to apolo
-
gise to Luke Ming Flanagan for relentlessly and
ag
gressively, without fact-checking, asserting his
dishonesty when Flanagan denied he was the au-
thor of a sleazy tweet. Gratifyingly, now a trial is
u
nderway in Belgium of the alleged real tweeter,
Flanagan replied to the casual apology saying
“see you in court”. Factlessness also drove the
RTÉ Éirígí payout.
Villager doesn’t like its faux earthy habit of
casting aspersions or drumming up a melée,
and then claiming its protagonists are o to
get a sandwich or whatever to show it’s not all
that zealous. Like Macavity’s Cat it’s not around
when the flak hits. An example of this was the
nut-heavy freedom rally it coyly promoted at the
free speech conference on 16 September, only to
distance it from it when it predictably got violent.
Proper Charlie
Charlie Flanagan gave an interview at the plough-
ing championships in which he declared that a
as Eoghan Murphy and even Patrick Connor-Sc-
arteen out of Ireland’s conservative party…you
w
ere very, actually you weren’t very anything.
You didn’t have any vision. You were quite FINE
GAEL.
Zombie tribalism
Village is above all an empty house for tribalism.
So Villager is fascinated that the rugger jocks
have put up the Cranberries’ Zombie anthem,
hammering the murderers of Omagh, against the
mind-concentrating Wolfe Tones’ Up the Ra. Of
course one is against violence, while the other
launders it, and so one is more deserving than
the other. But if it stokes resentment on the part
of a beleaguered minority it should be avoided.
If on the other hand it sparks resentment only on
the part of a tribe that’s insurgent there’s little to
be said against it. On the basis it’s dicult to ex
-
cuse chanting ‘Oo Ah Up the Ra’ without excusing
c
hanting ‘Oo Ah [or whatever] up the UVF’, Villag-
er would suggest if you don’t like other people’s
trib
alism, don’t sing your own. Try to think with
your head not your sect. Up being hateless and
considerate.
War bride
Bride Rosney, who has died prematurely at 74,
graced Village’s editorial board for four years
from 2013, not an enviable position — since
people assumed its members took some sort of
responsibility for the contents of the magazine
though the editorial board’s scrutiny was always
necessarily ‘ex post facto’. It didn’t survive the
decision taken to splash pre-inaugural Trump on
the cover, in ironic cross-hairs. Rosney was origi
-
nally from Cahirsiveen and became a headmis-
tress in Dublin before co-ordinating a large num-
ber of progressive campaigns and initiatives,
o
ver 50 years, including the Mary Robinson initia-
tive. Like Village’s editor she made her name as
he
ad of the Dublin City Association of An Taisce
though her 1970s tenure preceded his by 20
years. Board meetings are said to have been con
-
sumed with repartee about the state of Dublin’s
anc
ient street paving. Rosney’s radicalism came
up against the anti-radicalism of An Taisce’s
equally formidable then overall chair, Consuelo
O’Connor, in rows of Boudiccan proportions. Her
secular funeral in the RDS’s library, which fea
-
tured a President-o with Michael D Higgins, was
t
old the softest part of Rosney was her teeth. She
was kind to all around here though.
Youth Defence in its prime
A Bruton of departing Fine Gaelers

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